And he wanted to do good for himself. To prove he wasn’t a total screw-up. To show everyone he was a damn good agent. And to take down those sons of bitches who were killing people every day with the drugs they bought, cooked and sold. Just like they’d killed Lucie Gonzales.
He had to get over this bitterness that kept rising up inside him. He’d screwed up. He deserved whatever he got. If this was it, he was lucky. He needed to get his head on straight and make the best of this. Show them what he could really do.
Forsyth picked up a report and scanned it. “Typos,” he said, tossing it down on the desk. “Redo it.”
Ryan’s jaw clenched. “Okay.” But before he went back to the computer keyboard, he popped two more antacids into his mouth and crunched the minty tablets to a chalky powder.
Partners had to trust each other. Sometimes with their lives. The problem was, trust wasn’t something that came easily to Ryan. It was something that had to be earned. But he and Sera didn’t have time for that. No time to get to know each other. They were in this together now and they had to make the best of it.
“Tell us what you know about this drug he’s cooking.”
He, Manny and Sera sat in a coffee shop on Figueroa in downtown L.A. Sera sat beside Manny, across from him, a domed plastic cup full of iced mocha between her long, slender fingers. She wore no polish on short, rounded nails, and no rings adorned her fingers.
“Angel sugar. Back in the Sixties, it was angel dust. Phencyclidine. It was pretty popular for a while, but it has wicked side effects—delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, impaired speech. People even become violent or suicidal.”
“Combining it with pot and smoking it helps with the side effects,” Manny said.
Ryan looked at him, one eyebrow lifted. Sera rolled in her lips.
“What?” Manny said. “I’m just saying.”
“The side effects can still be bad,” Sera continued, lips twitching. “So a couple of years ago, this new stuff showed up on the market. They’ve combined it with a chemical called HCC3, which eliminates the bad and enhances the good–the strength, power, invulnerability, and the numbing effect on the mind.”
Ryan made a snort of disgust and she looked at him. He rolled his eyes. “Why do people do that shit?”
She tipped her head to one side and looked at him. “Don’t you know? You’re a federal agent, working in this business for…how long? And you don’t know why people do drugs? How hopeless and empty their lives can be?” She leaned forward, and her fingers tightened on the plastic cup to the point he thought she might crush it. “How afraid they can be? How powerless they feel? How drugs seem like the only thing that gives them any escape from the hell their life is?”
He stared at her tight jaw and flashing eyes, then scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah. I know that. I just think people should be strong enough to not need it.”
“If only everyone was that strong,” she muttered, dropping her gaze and giving her cup a little shake, rattling the ice cubes. He sensed something more behind that comment than she was saying.
“Anyway,” she continued just as he opened his mouth to admonish her. “It also has an anorexic effect.”
“It kills appetite.”
“Yup.” She smiled. “And guess what lots of teenage girls angst about?’
“Their weight.”
“You got it.” She shook her head and gave both men a wry smile. “The effects seem to be something girls that age are looking for, so dealers are targeting them. So many girls are dying from this stuff. We believe the sugar is being produced by one main lab. And we think we’ve narrowed its location down to Oakland.”
“Where Casas is president of the Oakland Death Angels chapter.”
“Yes.” She lifted her eyes to meet his again.
“Angel sugar is rivaling meth as the fastest growing drug problem in California, Oregon and Washington. There are only a couple of chemists in the U.S. capable of cooking that kind of stuff. The Death Angels have been selling it for a while, but lately there’s been a huge increase in the amounts available. It seems to indicate a bigger lab, and I suspect who’s behind it. I think they’re supplying the lab, the equipment and the precursor chemicals and, of course, taking a chunk of the profits.”
“Interesting. So who’s behind it?”
“It’s a drug cartel out of Mexico.”
“Okay. That’s who you’ve been investigating?”
She hesitated. Once again, Ryan’s nerves jumped. He was a patient man, but this whole trust thing and being thrust into this situation so quickly with someone he didn’t know was testing his self-control, and she was keeping secrets. He slammed a hand down on the table. Sera jumped, her eyes wide. Ryan leaned across the small table.
“Ever since we sat down here I’ve had the feeling you’re holding back on us,” he snarled. “We can’t work together unless we trust each other. Our lives are on the line every fucking minute we’re in that world. If I can’t trust you, I’m not putting my life in your hands and this whole deal is off. You have to tell us everything, Sera.”
“Easy, man.” Manny spoke in a low tone, and Ryan noticed other people in the coffee shop giving them the eye. He sucked in oxygen and leaned back in his seat. Sera stared at him, huge eyes blue and shadowed.
“You’re not telling us everything,” he repeated. “I can feel it in my gut.”
She nibbled her bottom lip, cast a sideways glance at Manny with her big eyes, and the picture she made was so sexy it dragged the breath Ryan had just inhaled right back out of him. He had to close his eyes against the sight.
His heart thudded slow and deep, and he heard the blood pound in his ears to the same rhythm. This was not going to work. Not if their so-called partner was lying to them. And not if he still wanted to jump her sexy bones.
Yes, she was holding something back, but it was something she shared with no one. Some things were just too risky to put out there. But she had to convince him that she was being honest with him. And she was. She hadn’t lied about anything.
“What exactly do you think I’m holding back?” Sera asked carefully. Her fingers turned the slick plastic cup between them.
“I don’t know,” Ryan growled, and the menacing look in his eyes intimidated and unnerved her. She had to get a grip. She was going to be in far scarier situations than sitting in a coffee shop with two ATF agents grilling her.
See, that was the thing–she was way more afraid of Ryan than she was of any outlaw biker gang member, and that included Dominick Casas. But Ryan, on the other hand–her usual defenses didn’t seem to be working against the overwhelming lust he inspired in her.
She had no time for lust. God, what a distraction at a time like this! Even in the past when she’d had relationships with guys–and she’d had a few, although never anything serious–she managed to keep them apart from her work. And her heart. Not that that was in play here, either. This was business and she had to keep Ryan at a distance. But damn, he made her feel stuff that scared the crap out of her.
“We’re not idiots, Sera.”
“I know that!” She stared him down. “Jesus, Ryan. I know you’re not. All I said was, you probably know as much as I do. How does that make me holding back? Do you want to compare notes on Casas? ’Cause we can do that, right down to the nitty-gritty details like what kind of beer he drinks and how many times cops have been called to his home for domestic disturbances. I know you know all that.”
His brows lowered, mouth tight, he nodded. “Yeah. But what else is there?”
“Just his link to Quintano.”
“Quintano?” Ryan flicked a glance at Manny.
“That’s the drug cartel.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
She nodded. “I don’t have a lot of evidence linking Casas with Quintano, but I’m pretty sure it’s there.”
Ryan nodded. “Okay. So you think this organization set Casas up to increase the production of sugar? This group has the
expertise to know how to do this?”
“For sure they do, and I don’t think Casas does. He’s not a chemist. Creating this new drug was no doubt complicated. It’s…evil. Diabolical stuff. If we could find the lab, it’d decimate the Oakland DAs.”
“And Quintano?”
“It won’t destroy them. They’re too big for that. But it would definitely hurt them. And severing the link between the cartel and an OMG would be huge.”
Ryan nodded, stroking his chin. “Okay.” He eyed her.
She looked at him fiercely, leaned forward. “I want to do that. I have to do that.”
After a long pause, he said, “Okay. Let’s do this.” He reached into his pocket for a roll of…what were those? Antacids? Then he glanced at his watch on his other wrist.
“I’m off,” he said, rising abruptly.
“The hospital?” Manny asked, and with a short nod Ryan strode out of the coffee shop.
Sera opened her door, her packing for her trip to Clover City interrupted. Oh lord. “Oh, hi, Leo.” She swallowed a sigh. Her neighbor kept dropping by on all kinds of pretexts, and much as she wanted to send him and his friendly overtures away, she didn’t have the heart when he was so clearly lonely.
Eyes as blue as her own gazed back at her. “Hi, Sera. How are you?” A smile creased his face.
“I’m fine.” She paused. “Do you uh…need something?”
She studied his faded but clean shirt, and alert eyes looked back at her from a clean-shaven face. His still-thick gray hair bristled over his head.
“Can I come in?”
She gripped the edge of the door. “I’m kind of busy…”
His face fell. “Oh. Okay…”
“No, it’s all right. Come in.” She stepped back with a sigh. Leo had no family other than a daughter who lived just outside L.A.—Sera hadn’t really paid attention to where–whom Leo rarely saw. Through their conversations it had become obvious that his daughter was a very busy woman and it hurt him that she had so little time for him, although he never criticized her. But Sera’d formed her own opinion of a self-absorbed workaholic who had no time for her father.
She was hardly one to judge, given that she was pretty absorbed in her own career, but the difference was she had no family, and there’d been times when she’d wanted to pick up the phone and call Leo’s daughter and tell her she should consider herself lucky to have a father. But that wasn’t her business.
She wasn’t exactly looking for relationships with people. She was busy too. But when she’d discovered Leo loved apple pie, she’d somehow found herself baking pies in anticipation of his visits. Just to be nice. Because he missed his own daughter.
He walked in, close enough for her to smell a fresh scent like pine or spruce or cedar, close enough for her to see silvery whiskers on his lean cheeks, just starting to need a shave. “How’s your job going?”
She closed the door, her back to him, and paused before she turned to face him.
“Good.”
He knew she worked for the DEA but she’d only told him she worked at a desk job.
“Still working in the office?”
“Yeah.” She wasn’t about to reveal her latest news, much as she was excited to share it with someone. She had no one in her life to share things like that with, and that’s how she wanted it. People just let you down.
“I worry about you.”
She chuckled. “There’s nothing to worry about. And besides, you barely know me.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I know. But you’re almost the same age as my daughter, so you know…” He hitched a shoulder. “You need someone to look after you.”
“I don’t need looking after,” she answered lightly. “I can look after myself. I’ve been looking after myself for a long time.”
And yet, even as she said the words, she kind of wished he was her father, the father she’d lost so long ago. Because sometimes she felt a need to lay her cheek on a strong chest, to have strong arms around her, to be looked after instead of always looking after herself.
She’d cried for her daddy. He hadn’t been a model father, that’s for sure. He’d drunk and gambled their lives away, but when he’d left, her mother’s life had spiraled even deeper into hell. Sera had cried and hoped and wished her father would come back for her. But he never had.
She certainly wasn’t going to get emotionally involved with a total stranger, some kind of father figure. That would just be crazy.
“I’m going away for a while,” she told him. “On business.”
“Oh. For how long?”
“I don’t know. It could be a while.”
“I can look after your apartment for you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need anyone to look after my apartment.”
Well, that probably wasn’t entirely true. If she ended up being gone longer than a few days, someone would have to keep her mail and newspapers from clogging up and overflowing her mailbox.
She’d worry about that when it happened. She hated relying on anyone else, so she’d make do on her own as long as she could.
Chapter Five
“Nervous?”
Sera shot Ryan a disgusted look. “No.”
They stood beside Ryan’s Harley in the parking lot of the Palms Motel in Clover City, on their way to The Patch for a night of drinking, partying and hopefully recording incriminating conversations. The sun had just set. Palm trees were silhouetted black against the deepening blue of the sky and the streetlights gleamed on the monstrous chromed-up machine next to them. Sera wiped her hands down her thighs.
He laughed. “If you’re not, you’re nuts.”
“Thanks very much.” Sera jammed her helmet onto her head and eyed the spoked wheels, the huge engine, the large, chromed mufflers tunneling underneath black leather saddlebags.
“Got your recorders?”
“Yes.” She’d received a crash course on how to use the surveillance equipment. Josh Witter insisted she had two, just in case. One tiny device was inside her cell phone; the other looked like an extra battery and was in the pocket of her jeans.
Ryan started the engine–a whine, a bang and then a rattling, bumpy idle. Sera closed her eyes briefly.
Ryan swung himself onto the bike then looked at her. She pressed her lips together. He arched a brow. “Sera?”
She gave a jerky nod then climbed on behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. God. He was big and muscular and warm, and as she pressed against him she could even smell the scent of the shampoo he used on his hair, clean and tangy.
Okay, she was a little nervous. The machine underneath them rumbled with power and speed. With a roar of the motor, Ryan pulled out of the parking lot onto Juniper Road. Glancing over her shoulder at the rapidly retreating motel, Sera saw the surveillance car driven by Josh pull out to follow them. It was reassuring to know that wherever they went, at least two other agents were sitting outside keeping an eye on things. But that only went so far, as she well knew.
The tranny shifted into second with a clank and a lurch, making her heart lurch too. Her arms tightened around Ryan. Good god in heaven. The choppy roar of the engine and the wind in her ears drowned out any other sounds as she clutched Ryan’s body and hung on.
She could not let on that she was nervous about riding on the Harley. The lack of control she felt hanging on to nothing but a black leather jacket while so exposed and vulnerable and flying down the street sent spears of panic through her.
On top of that, she was pressuring herself, like she always did. She really wanted to do a good job of this. She had to do a good job. She knew she could look after herself, but Ryan’s warnings about putting all their lives on the line had stuck with her, and she worried she could do something to screw up and get a whole lot of other people killed.
No. It wouldn’t happen. She had to think positively.
When they walked into The Patch, Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy pounded over the speakers. Ryan took Sera
’s hand and led the way. She stuck close to him, not because she needed to, but because it looked good.
Several men greeted Ryan–or rather, Tommy, as she needed to think of him–with loud calls and raised beers. He led Sera to the bar and put his arm around her waist as they stood there and waited to be served. She tipped her head and smiled up at him and he smiled back.
Jesus. She hadn’t seen many smiles from him since the night they’d met in this exact place. She’d forgotten how sinfully melting-hot that smile could be. Thick, liquid wanting slid through her and down between her legs. She forgot to breathe.
He nuzzled her ear. “Okay?” he whispered.
Get a grip, get a grip. “Okay.”
She dragged air into her lungs and smiled at the bartender who slid two bottles of beer across the bar to them. Ryan tossed him a twenty-dollar bill and let him keep the change.
“Throwing money around,” she murmured.
“Makes them think I’m rolling in it,” he answered back, gaze fastened on her so that anyone looking at him would have thought he’d just said, “Let’s go back to my place and fuck each other stupid.” Hot eyes and a sexy smile seduced her. “They know I have to get that much cash from selling guns or dope.”
“Ah.” She nodded, quivering inside. Suddenly doubt filled her. Doubt at her ability to withstand Ryan looking at her like he wanted to do her right there on the bar, smiling seductively, touching her with warm hands. But hey there–she didn’t have to withstand it. They were a couple, and if they wanted to convince people of that, she might as well just give herself over to it. As long as she kept her wits about her when it came to other people, she could bask in the glow of Ryan’s calescent attention.
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